Page:The Author of Beltraffio, Pandora, Georgina's Reasons, The Path of Duty, Four Meetings (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1885).djvu/110

106 "I like novelties," said Count Vogelstein, smiling, with an air of considerable resolution. He could not, however, be satisfied with an explanation that only begged the question; and, when they disembarked in New York, he felt, even amid the confusion of the wharf and the heaps of disembowelled baggage, a certain acuteness of regret at the idea that Pandora and her family were about to vanish into the unknown. He had a consolation, however: it was apparent that for some reason or other—illness or absence from town—the gentleman to whom she had written had not, as she said, come down. Vogelstein was glad—he could n't have told you why—that this sympathetic person had failed her; even though without him Pandora had to engage single-handed with the United States Custom-house. Vogelstein's first impression of the western world was received on the landing-place of the German steamers at Jersey City,—a huge wooden shed, covering a wooden wharf which resounded under the feet, palisaded with rough-hewn, slanting piles, and bestrewn with masses of heterogeneous luggage. At one end, toward the town, was a row of tall, painted palings, behind which he could distinguish a press of hackney-coachmen, brandishing their whips and waiting their victims, while their voices rose, incessant, with a sharp, strange sound, at once fierce and familiar. The whole place, behind the fence, appeared to bristle and resound. Out there was America, Vogelstein said to himself, and he looked toward it with a sense that he ought to